Victor and Bob are often riding northwaves on their sup's.. have seen them ripping up some nice waverides. i have a very small older northwave that i have not tried yet. we are in jupiter area of se florida.. pretty sure i have seen others from time to time as well.. Best wishes

Got a full quiver (3.7 to 6.2) of the ZXL's from 2007 and two newer ZXL's from 2011. Love the sails and use them about 70% for B&J and 30% wave sailing in NJ. Been a fan of Northwaves since the early 90's. Had the Tri-Lights back then and really liked the single cam option for B&J conditions.

We're curious to know if anybody on the east coast uses Northwave Sails.

We would love your feedback! What do you think of your sails? What colors would you like to see for custom options? Have you tried our new lightest sail yet, the Sinewave ?

Happy Sailing!

Got custom colored 5.7 ZX9 in 2013. Using it for lake sailing in NH. Absolutely love the sail. Huge range and tuneability. Very well built, seems bomb-proof.
Still would be great to have rigging videos as other sail makers provide. It took me a while to figure out the details.

Andrei.
P.S. One thing. It takers forever to dry the sail. Literally forever. Somehow water gets trapped between the layers.

I haven't dried a sail since the early 1980s, when PVC would absorb and retain water. I'll even derig and roll 'em up and bag 'em in the water if the beach is too gnarly, then pour out the excess before tossing them into my RV dripping wet. Of course, that's all fresh water, not the sodium chloride stew you coasties have. They're plastic, and they dry without any effect or effort.

I've owned almost every -- have sailed EVERY -- model of sail NW has ever produced. I can't get enough of them, and have bought 12 to 14 quivers of them this century alone. With each passing year, I tweak the design and materials of my sails (at no extra cost unless more expensive materials are involved) according to my evolving skills, objectives, and age.

Up to last month, I was riding Featherlights, customized highly but not in any manner not available to any other customer. I get zero freebies, just the same excellent service anyone else gets. My customization included options which extend the wind range in both directions, so I was constantly getting razzed about rigging too big (never mind that I continued playing while everyone else kept going ashore to re-rig as the wind fluctuated ... just one of over a dozen reasons I prefer to rig big). While others rigged 5.2s, then 4.7s, and then sometimes 4.2s, I just stuck with my 5.7 for hours for one simple reason: I was having far too much fun to waste my time slogging across the wind shadow and the weedbed just because everybody else did.

Then a couple of months ago I got my hands on a Sinewave. A couple of round trips across the Columbia in a wide range of winds running from 18G30 to 30G>35 (mph) made it crystal clear: this 5.2 Sinewave had more power AND a wider wind range than my 5.7 Featherlight, but felt in my hands and flipped in the air as lightly as most 4.2s. I very quickly traded in my 3.7 to 5.7 Featherlight quiver for a 3.2 to 5.2 Sinewave quiver covering a greater wind range, because I no longer have any need for a 5.7 anything. I did keep my 6.2 Featherlight for emergency niche use, but the 5.2 Sinewave's range covers most of the 6.2's.

And those custom performance options I used to choose for a broader wind range? No mas. This sail is too good out of the box to benefit from them.

The Featherlight is still a great sail, with a little bit of stability advantage over a Sinewave at the very top end ... but now when the FL 6.2 is thoroughly powered, I'll jump onto my SW 5.2 instead for a MUCH smaller feel in the turns.

Crap! An hour of my time and not even a free fin screw to show for it. That's OK; I'll be eating swell for lunch Thursday.

I'll leave it to NW to discuss grams and materials, as I care about neither. Here's what I DO care about in my sails after owning hundreds of them and testing another few hundred of many brands.

Scale weight and dynamic, perceived -- especially rotational --weight comparisons can be vastly different, depending on many factors. They include aerodynamics, whether the sailor spins the sail about its center or "barn-doors" it around the mast during jibes and directional transitions, mass distribution, profile, roller vs fixed hook, downhaul and outhaul tuning, materials (e.g., water retention), size, power*, and more, maybe including scale weight.

* Power counts more than sq meters when choosing or comparing sails. I've sailed my FL 5.7 all summer, because it works very well in winds averaging from 20 to 30 mph by the sensor at my usual site, which has been a very common range this year. I'm dialed into that sail, and always rigged it when the wind was in that range. The only exception was if the wind was averaging close to 30 and I expected it to hold or increase.

That went out the window when I laid my hands on a short quiver of Sinewaves and found over many windy days that the 5.2 SW wind range perfectly covered the FL 5.7's wind range. Just substitute "5.2" for "5.7" in the above paragraph. Thus the most useful scale weight comparison, for folks who consider that relevant to anything, should be between a Featherlight of one size and a Sinewave of the next smaller size.

It's much like the difference between race sails and B&J sails. Race sails (and Featherlights) are designed to be run big compared to their more laid back stablemates. They hold their COE exceptionally steady and produce less drag when pushed to their upper limits, so in skilled hands and on the right boards they are capable of producing higher top speeds. The folks who prefer to rig efficiently never deliberately tap that performance regime and thus usually bypass the FL's or a race sail's strongest advantage. With the SW, however, efficiency buffs can rig small and eat their cake, too, and the hell with rigging big for the dozen or more reasons I used to rig so big. The Sinewave is simply a more efficient (as defined by its ratio of power to square meters) sail.

That it maneuvers and spins -- i.e., feels -- smaller than many other sails in its wind range, let alone its size range, is a huge bonus, especially for efficiency buffs. They CAN still slog their butts ashore and rerig All. Day. Long. if they enjoy using only the lower third of each sail's useful range and if they'd rather swap sails than actually sail, but they don't HAVE to. They can use the whole range of just one light sail rather than rigging three, and can thus wear themselves out on the water than on land. TOW always beats TOL, and the SW is a very noticeable step in that direction.

I will add this about the Autobatten system: I've never had one second's problem with it. I might snug it up at the end of the first season if I spot a wrinkle in a batten sleeve. That 90 seconds is the only time or thought I EVER give to my entire batten system. It's within 90 seconds of being like the crankshaft in my car engine; it's there for the duration and completely invisible to me.

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